Engineering a path of discipleship

At the heart of one engineer’s discernment is stewardship: How do we maintain our quality of life through respectful and responsible means?

Growing up, two inclinations molded the majority of my activities: a passion for interacting with the natural world and an interest in building things. As a kid I spent my free time outside, endlessly nagged my dad to take me fishing, and assembled whatever I could, making castles with paper and tape as a kindergartner and building a bike from scratch as a teen.

Jake Schueller is a civil engineer building renewable energy projects around North America.

Hulu’s new show portrays a world where the bodies of women are used and discarded, exploited much like the land and water Gilead’s people have destroyed.

What if you woke up one morning and everything and everyone you knew and loved was gone? What if it happened slowly over time? In Hulu’s new series The Handmaid’s Tale, based on the 1986 book by Margaret Atwood, this is the situation in which protagonist Offred (Elizabeth Moss) finds herself. She goes to sleep in the United States of America and wakes up in the Republic of Gilead, an oppressive regime based on the perversion of scripture and patriarchy taken to the extreme.

Sarah Margaret Babbs writes on peace and justice, parent loss, and hope in suffering on her blog Fumbling Toward Grace. She lives in Carmel, Indiana with her husband and three children.

The parish garden that brings faith down to earth

A nonprofit organization helps churches put down roots—both in the soil and the community.

Every week, hands plunge into the earth at St. Benedict the African East Catholic Church in Englewood, a neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. Around five raised-bed plots and six container gardens church volunteers, police and fire department baseball league players, and various community members pull weeds, plant flowers, and get to know one another.

The “Garden of Eatin’ ” grows tomatoes, kale, peppers, eggplant, and salad greens. The congregation shares the crops and donates the excess to the local food pantry, says Susan Rashad, founder of the parish’s garden club.

Wyatt Massey is a social justice journalist based in New York. He loves to run, has strong feelings about superheroes, and enjoys wandering.

Earth is a sacred text

The holiness of the Eucharist is alive in the soil with which we work.

The smell of horses and leather filled the air as I made the last harness adjustments, stepped behind the team of willing Belgians, and drove them to the walking plow that stood at the head of the garden. Trace chains clinked against the doubletree as I hooked the plow. I joined the lines in a plowman’s knot and ducked into the loop they formed, situating the smooth leather around my back. With the loop running under my left arm, across my back and around my right shoulder, I was able to control the team while I took hold of the plow handles, worn smooth with repeated use.

Robert L. Ernst is the founder of Plowshares Farm Center for Education and Spirituality in Buffalo, Kentucky.

An oil and gas rush or last gasp?

Who really benefits from oil and natural gas production? Are those benefits worth the risks?

The United States is experiencing an unprecedented oil and natural gas rush, but this rush is less about finding untapped reserves of these fossil fuels and more about getting those commodities to market before any more of its leaky bottom falls out. Overproduction because of fracking has contributed to a collapse in the price of a barrel of oil, which hit a low of $26 in February.

The company using marine trash to inspire change

Caring for creation one skateboard at a time.

A search online for sustainable skateboards, sunglasses, or bamboo utensil sets reveals Bureo—the company—in the top results. All their lines of gear are fun, extremely well-engineered, eco-friendly, and, again, fun. Exploring the site and the company’s young history rewards the curious with an inspirational narrative of an American success story played out on a global stage.

Pope Francis puts the environment on the global agenda

Pope Francis took major steps to offer some practical and spiritual sustenance to the idea of “integral development” that he promoted in his encyclical Laudato Si’. In August he placed his own mark on church tradition by instituting an eighth corporal and spiritual work of mercy, by adding care of our common home to a list of those acts of compassion and service expected of all Catholics.

Go outside, it’s good for your soul

Let your interior life be enriched by time spent outdoors.

On a recent trip through Yellowstone, I encountered a couple crouched next to a tall spruce tree, binoculars up and muttering to each other. Then they grew excited, both spotting something, the man going for his camera, the woman on her smart phone. “I’ve got it!” she finally exclaimed. “A mountain chickadee!” They high-fived, overflowing with giddiness.

Beth Haile graduated from Boston College with her Ph.D., has taught moral theology at Caroll College in Montana, and is currently a writer living in Waterloo, Iowa.

Who cares? We do.

U.S. Catholic readers say Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ has inspired them to care for their common home.

It’s been almost a year since the June 2015 publication of Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ (On Care for Our Common Home) and, in that time, Pope Francis’ call for all people to take “swift and unified global action” to address the crisis posed by environmental degradation has spread across the world.

Laura Whitaker is a former associate editor at U.S. Catholic. She currently works at a children’s publishing house in Chicago.

The fracked up economy

Fracking has once again made the United States an energy exporter—but at what cost?

For the first time in decades the United States is approaching a level of energy independence considered impossible just a few years ago. The oil and natural gas “fracking” boom, coupled with an unusually warm winter and an Asian economic slowdown that has slaked the global thirst for oil, has translated into plunging oil prices. That means U.S. consumers have enjoyed home heating and gasoline prices at levels most thought they would never see again.